Why Didn't You Come Sooner?
by Kountarakis
Summary: The Shepherds always come in time to rescue the future children. However, they are not omnipotent. There is bound to be a time when the Shepherds come late and someone has to suffer.


**All references belong to their respective owners. Please review. Helpful criticism is appreciated :)**

"Five more minutes, mother," Morgan mumbled as she turned her body over to her side. Fingers tucked her unruly hair behind her ears but the normally maternal action felt foreign and uncomfortable. Morgan could hear the sound of raspy breathing behind her. Something felt wrong about it but Morgan ignored the feeling. However, as the breathing continued and her heart rate increased significantly, she had no choice but to question her situation and trust her instincts. Did her mother normally breathe like that? She tried to remember but her head began to pound fervently. She looked for a specific memory but the longer she searched, the more her head felt like it was going to explode. Instinctively, Morgan held her throbbing head with her hands and curled into a ball as she waited for the pain to subside, agony etched onto her face. Her clenched jaw gradually relaxed when the pain finally dissipated.

Mother, where are you? Morgan wondered. Her mother would have come to comfort her if she had saw her previous episode. Yes, mother would have come ... Suddenly, Morgan came to the horrifying conclusion that her mother, and perhaps even her father, were nowhere near her and that her mother wasn't the one to tuck her hair behind her ears. Not a second later, Morgan was overwhelmed with the smell of putrid and rotten breath. She turned around and saw the face of a decaying, humanoid monster with penetrating red eyes and smoke curling from its mouth and body.

With a hideous roar, the monster pounced on top of her and grabbed her throat with its claw-like hands, digging its nails through the submental space below her chin and trapping her with its deformed body. Morgan squirmed and kicked her legs but nothing would loosen the thing's hold on her. She was slowly and painfully losing air; her struggling only hastened her eventual asphyxiation unless she found a way to escape. Using the last bits of her waning energy, Morgan looked for anything that could at least loosen the hand on her neck. She looked to her left. Nothing of use. The grip on her throat tightened. Morgan gasped. Her eyes widened in surprise and from the pain. There was no time left. She peered to her right and saw a small but sharp stone within reach. She smiled slightly. This was her chance! In an act fueled with the desire to live, the girl swiftly grabbed the stone and stabbed the assailant in the head. She heard the sound of a cracking skull but the demon continued to strangle her with its claws and stare at her with its piercing eyes as though nothing had happened. Frantic, Morgan fruitlessly bashed the rock again and again on its head, each strike getting weaker than the next. She was starting to lose hope and felt her head becoming cloudy. It was getting hard to discern anything. She just wanted things to end right there but through the fog, she heard a familiar voice. It was obscure at first but then it became clearer.

"Analyze the situation, Morgan," her father's voice called out to her from the depths of her mind. With blurring eyes, the girl on the verge of death immediately stopped her assault and robotically stared with a similar intensity as the monster. Her eyes conveyed lifelessness that contrasted her desperation to live a few seconds before. The girl named Morgan did not exist at that moment. Instead, she was replaced by the cold, calculating tactician side of her. The strategist did not look pained but eerily calm. So calm, that the jab to the monster's throat was invisible to anyone or anything observing the scene and that the subsequent decapitation of its head seemed faster than lightning. The monstrosity disintegrated in front of her and Morgan staggered back on her hands and knees, sucking in precious air she had taken for granted until that very moment. Her eyes gradually turned back to its original state.

Little by little, Morgan's breathing returned to its normal rate as she recuperated from the attack. Looking around, she spotted an ancient pillar behind her, scooted towards it, and leaned her tired body against the rigid surface. Aside from the pain from her bruised throat, the pain from her body had mostly subsided and she was finally able to look at her surroundings in more detail.

The first thing she noticed was the blue. The pillars, crystals, pools of water, and floor around her emitted a color wheel of varieties of blue light ranging from the darkest and royalist hues to the lightest and sky-like hues. The light from the cerulean crystals and water bathed Morgan in a holy energy that pulsed around her neck. The light healed the bruises and soothed the pain but the area still felt sore. However, Morgan had no complaints and would have soaked in the comforting light for hours if not for the fact that she was in a terrible predicament. Everything was so pretty but she had to find an escape route and find her parents who were likely in the same dangerous situation she found herself to be in. With her injuries healed, the glow around her body vanished. It was time to go. Morgan rose from her spot and walked into the unknown.

—

What Morgan assumed to be four days in the ancient ruin felt like a year to her. Since Morgan could not see the sun from within the caverns, she measured days by sleep and hours by relative feeling. She could have been there for more or less than four days but that wasn't as important as the progress she made. So far, she had been unsuccessful in finding an exit and she was starved and dehydrated. Morgan eyed the pools of water around her but she refrained from drinking from them. For some reason, the water healed her wounds but made her extremely sleepy. With the monsters she called Risen lurking around, she couldn't risk being caught asleep. In order to minimize injuries and trips to the pool, she kept encounters to a minimum and only engaged when the odds were in her favor. On the occasions where she had to fight, she would sneak behind the Risen and quickly kill as many as possible before running back to a planned choke point to deal with them one by one. The days of hiding, searching, and fighting combined with her hunger and thirst quickly exhausted her. By midday, or what she perceived was midday, Morgan collapsed from the malnutrition.

On the cold floor, Morgan wondered if she would die. If she did, she would be the most pitiful person on the planet. She would die alone with no memory of her past save a few with her father. Morgan wept, crying in despair and loneliness. Nothing mattered anymore. The Risen could come and she wouldn't care. No one would come for her and escape was only just a dream. The beautiful crystals mocked her in their bright light. The glow sickened her. Somewhere in between her thoughts, she fell asleep and, much to her disappointment, woke up untouched. The chances of a Risen finding her were great but it seemed as though a divine being had protected her during her slumber. She took it as the heavens pitying her and decided to humor them by trudging forwards through the endless tunnel.

—

After hours of walking through almost identical rooms, Morgan reached a spot where the crystals stopped forming. The view before her was pitch black, as though the point beyond her was shrouded in eternal darkness. It gazed at her intently, much like how the Risen looked into her soul the day she awoke. After what she had been through, the dark did not scare her at all and she met its gaze with equal scrutiny.

A moment later, she resumed walking, embracing the darkness as it swallowed her. In the comforting void, Morgan moved onwards away from the moans of the Risen and their bright red eyes until she suddenly lost her balance when her foot hit something solid. She fell forwards and grunted when she hit the floor. However, her body hit the floor at an incline. "An incline … change in elevation… I can get out," she thought. She felt around with her hands and gripped rounded edges that stacked together to form stairs. Feeling a rush she had lost since her last Risen ambush, Morgan scrambled up the stairs with renewed energy, careful not to trip on the smooth steps. Before she knew it, tears of joy flowed down the dimples formed by her widening smile. If not for the murkiness of the dungeon Morgan was currently escaping, one would see that the glow on her face was like the sun as it transfigured the world and its inhabitants on the rare occasion it showed itself on an overcast day. Morgan escaped the underworld with her footsteps and hushed breathing as her parting gift and faced the overworld with awe. She could feel herself welcoming back hope and dispelling the despair she harbored from the underworld as she appreciated the view of the sunset.

Morgan heard the scuffle of footsteps in front of her and looked down to see a woman with long blue hair holding a golden sword and a man in a cloak similar to her own. Both were looking at her with a softness in their eyes as though they knew she had gone to hell and back. Observing them one more time, Morgan realized that her father was standing right in front of her and that her mother was probably the woman next to him. Upon recognizing her parents, she was overwhelmed with several emotions. She felt relieved but at the same time, scared that this reunion was all a dream. Morgan ran and embraced her parents in a tight hug that she hoped conveyed her indescribable feelings to them. She held them close, afraid that they would vanish like ghosts, and, to her delight, they reciprocated her hug.

—

The Robin and Lucina of this time let the girl sob onto them. From the way the girl was crying, they knew that she had gone through a multitude of hardships; she just needed to let go of her pain. Silently, they decided to encourage her catharsis by hugging the girl tightly. As she bawled and buried her face into them, through some paternal/maternal force, the couple began to pat her head and whisper honeyed words of reassurance. A few minutes passed before the young woman peaked up and smiled at them with tears still at the corners of her eyes. "Mother, Father," she said with a hoarse voice. "I've missed you both so much." She embraced the shocked newly-weds again, albeit, with less force. Robin and Lucina could only look at each other in wonder, horror, and shock. Here was their daughter crying and hugging them, having been through Naga-knows-what, and they couldn't do anything about it except comfort her. All they could think to say was, "It's alright. We're here now," and all they could think about was why they didn't come sooner. And so the three stood there as a family, bathing in the warm light of the sunset and each other's embrace. Reunited after being separated by time.

 **Just a short thing that I've always wanted to write. What would happen if the Shepherds arrived later than usual in the paralogues? I don't like to end things like this so here is an omake that entirely destroys the mood.**

Omake

… She could feel herself welcoming back hope and dispelling the despair she harbored from the underworld as she appreciated the view of the sunset.

That was until she smelled the mouth-watering aroma of meat on a spit.

Morgan suddenly jerked her head towards the direction of the lovely smell. Days of not eating led her to irrationally charge towards the food and nothing would stop her from having it; she vaulted over prickly shrubs and tree stumps, splashed through waist-deep rivers infested with disease, punched a bear when it tried to challenge her, and jumped from tree to tree like a ninja all before she crouched down behind a rock overlooking a camp. She peered above the rock and saw the dwindling flame of a campfire. Focusing with what little light was left, she spotted a few chunks of cooked meat on a pan. Eager to sate her hunger, Morgan ran towards the fire, grabbed the meat, and ran back behind the rock. The meat was warm so she was able to stuff herself without scalding her tongue or hands. It was the best thing she had in her life, not like she had anything to compare to it. After she devoured the meal, she greedily sucked her fingers of the meat juice before peeking over the rock only to be met with a stern-looking knight about eight feet tall. Morgan let out a frightened squeal as the knight pointed his spear at her neck. With a cry, the knight shouted, "I am Stahl and my meat shall be avenged!" Unbeknownst to the small tactician, Stahl had activated Vengeance, Astra, and Lethality (because he is OP), and within milliseconds, stabbed and slashed her with his MAD skillz until her body parts fell onto the ground as little chunks of meat. Now that his meat was avenged, Stahl, like the gentleman he was, buried the pieces and used the rock as a tombstone. Crying for his devoured meat, he carved onto the rock:

On a field, sable, the meat pieces, gules.

The moon and the stars were shining and Stahl felt as though the meat was telling him that it was okay. He walked back to his tent with a melancholy smile on his face as the night became wrapped in a perfect silence.

 **Henry: Nyahaha! The blood was amazing!**


End file.
